Activating Circularity Throughout the City
There’s no reason we can’t use vacant land to jumpstart circular infrastructure.
The City of Philadelphia’s Department of Public Property and related land holding agencies own 10,000+ vacant lots located all around the city. These lots are often overgrown with weeds, filled with litter, dumping grounds for construction waste, and potentially dangerous. The city is forced to spend our tax dollars on cleaning and maintaining these lots, and they can’t keep up. Circular Philadelphia views the city’s vacant lots as an opportunity to increase circularity throughout Philadelphia while building businesses.
Vacant Land Initiatives
Revive and Thrive
Thanks to a grant from the William Penn Foundation, Thomas Jefferson University’s Park in a Truck program, Circular Philadelphia, Trash Academy, and Glitter are partnering with the community to transform a vacant lot as a pilot project to activate open spaces in Philadelphia and address local dumping behaviors. The project brings to life aspects of Circular Philadelphia’s Temporary Vacant Land Activation Policy Guide and will test low-threshold, inexpensive improvements of an unused lot that can model scalable approaches to neighbor-led vacant lot revitalization.
Temporary Activation of Vacant Land
By creating a transparent and easy to use system for businesses that want to use vacant lots to increase economic opportunity and community groups that want to improve quality of life in neighborhoods, we can prevent illegal dumping and strengthen our city. Circular Philadelphia has created a policy guide to help Philadelphia legislators and policy makers in crafting straightforward and effective policy to reduce illegal dumping and increase equitable community and economic development in Philadelphia by temporarily activating vacant lots.
Vacant Land Use Assistance
Circular Philadelphia has created a system through which circular businesses or community groups can receive guidance and technical assistance to work with the city to temporarily use vacant lots to develop pilot projects to expand their businesses. Groups can express interest in a particular lot through Circular Philadelphia’s Expression of Interest Form to get started.
Vacant Land Working Group
The vacant land working group focuses on creating and increasing opportunities for circular businesses by leveraging vacant land in Philadelphia. With over 10,000 publicly owned vacant lots, there is a great opportunity to leverage this underutilized resource in Philadelphia to support circular businesses. Duties of the working group will be to draft policy proposals for temporary vacant land use, match vacant parcels with circular businesses’ needs, work with City Council and land holding agencies to create land use agreements and ensure that community is engaged in project development so they can partake in the benefits.
Current projects and areas of focus:
- Working with city land agencies on vacant land proposals for circular economy pilot projects
- Advocating for a temporary vacant land activation policy in Philadelphia
- Assisting groups with navigating city government requirements to gain access to vacant land for temporary use